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Sox Shuffle Continues
On the heels of the announcement last week that crime in Chicago was down in the first half of 2009 over the first half of 2008, Chicago experienced one of its most violent weekends so far this year. Weekend violence accounted for 63 shootings, one stabbing, and a total of 10 deaths. Of course, looking back at last summer's violence, the bloody start to this July is pretty pedestrian, all the more reason to be skeptical about that recent decrease claim: last year's murder tally was the highest in five years, undermining the claim that violent crime is decreasing rather than just returning to normal levels.
In case you're interested (and we know you are) the Red Eye - yes, we know we've gone Mean Girls on them in the past but this time we mean it - has a pretty interesting feature tracking murders so far in 2009 and breaking it down statistically.
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Dear Premier Daley,
may I PLEASE legally possess a handgun now?
Seeing how your unmotivated police force simply cannot respond to all these events, maybe the ability to protect myself would keep body counts lower in the future.
If only white suburban internet spammer morons like fr0ntl1n3 were allowed to pack a handgun all these shootings that probably mostly took place in Englewood and on the West side would have surely been prevented.
In most of these situations, the victim was either already armed or wouldn't have had a chance to pull a weapon.
Which brings to mind a question for those who wish to protect themselves. It seems to me that unless they walk around with their safety off and their finger on the trigger, anyone carrying a weapon for self-defense would be at a tactical disadvantage. Criminals know they're going to act and have time to plan their attack, while victims must act almost instantaneously. More often than not, any criminal would be on the victim and have them covered before they realized there was a problem. Having a gun, therefore, would only decrease safety, as it would either tempt the gun owner to attempt to pull a weapon while at a tactical disadvantage, or it would agitate the criminal when he discovers the weapon while rifling through the gun owner's pockets. At best, the criminal would get a free gun. At worst, the criminal squeezes the trigger while the gun owner is still pulling his weapon from his pocket. And if the gun owner somehow does get his gun out, a gunfight ensues that results in a stray bullet going through the head of some kid looking out a window.
So, then, gun owners. How would you carry a gun to eliminate the criminals' tactical advantage?
what an excellent post. My guess is you won't get a single lucid response from the pro-gun people.
I can see an advantage for handgun owners/carriers in the below situations:
1. Stumbling across a crime in progress against a third party (comes from the frontier desire to play sheriff).
2. Home invasion.
Uh...that's all I got.
I am not a gun person at all, in fact I have never fired a gun. However, I am sympathetic to the argument for allowing people to keep guns in their homes to defend against home invasions. I think a person should be able to defend themselves in those circumstances rather than crawling under the bed and praying for the cops to come while a criminal is walking around the house.
To your point about conceal-and-carry though, I agree that would not solve anything and would probably cause more problems.
However, as a policy that is supposed to reduce violence, I think the gun ban has failed. Not saying that allowing people to have them would fix anything, but the policy is not accomplishing its intent.
I basically have the same views, you should be able to protect your castle but CC'ers are nutters. Guns will always be a problem here as long as people can easily go down to Dixie and straw purchase them by the bushel and bring them happy gangsters up here. As long as drugs are so drastically criminalized their sale will remain lucrative, which means of course means that you need guns.
The unspoken conflict is between city and country.
In a city, owning a firearm as a means of protection is not really justifiable. If you have a home invasion, you can call 911 from a phone more easily, and quietly, than loading a gun and going stalking into the dark. With modern 911 systems, you don't even need to talk. Police response, save in some really outlier situations, is quite good. Most burgler and home invaders just want to smash and grab. The lights and sirens alone will scare them away.
Concealed carry? Say you're woman walking a dangerous stretch of street in a sketchy area. Are you going to walk with one hand on you pistol the whole time, ready to draw? Rapists use blitz attacks, pulling a gun is far less likely than one might think.
But in the country, where police response takes longer, where people are on their own and the likelihood of crossfire casualties is much lower, I understand the desire, and even respect it. Until both sides in the gun argument have a discussion that accepts this difference you're going to get some very intractable gun owners.
Guns don't make you safer in the city. Strong communities, decreased poverty and well-paid, well-trained law enforcement make you safer.
I'm looking at this from a tactical standpoint without taking into account my personal political stance concerning gun possession. As such, I don't know that having a gun inside the home to use against burglars or invaders is any more tactically sound than carrying a gun in the street. Again, there's the matter of where and how you keep it. Unless you have it loaded and nearby at all times, then it's unlikely you'll have it handy unless conditions are just right and you have fair warning before being confronted by invaders. And the likelihood of a favorable outcome only decreases during the times when invaders are likely to strike, late at night when you're asleep.
Again, I'm not taking a political stand. I'm simply asking questions. Where do gun people store their guns so that they'll be ready to use in the event of home invasion?
Where do gun people store their guns so that they'll be ready to use in the event of home invasion?
In the waistband of their PJ's.
Taped to the underside of the toilet bowl in case someone breaks in while "nature calls".
Hooked to the dog's collar.
Having grown up in a decaying industrial town in Michigan packed to the gills with gun nuts I can tell you you're not that far off.
Well, I think that storing a gun in a safe place in the bedroom or bathroom with the safety on could provide a person with a chance to get to it in time in some cases. Obviously if you don't hear a burglar coming then you wouldn't have time to get it, but then you might not be able to call 911 either. If a person has any advanced notice of someone breaking in (like hearing them go through a door or window), there is a chance to get to a gun. And I certainly wouldn't hunt the person down, but would have it in case the person comes after my family. I just wouldn't feel comfortable leaving my family's safety completely in the hands of someone else (the cops) in that situation. I agree that most burgulars probably want to snatch and grab, but that wouldn't be enough to comfort me in a situation like that. Even if there is a 1% chance that they are a murderer, that is too much.
I live in a safe neighborhood and we haven't felt the need to get a gun, but if crime worsened significantly in my area and I felt like we were at risk, I would feel safer with a gun in my house and am sympathetic to that argument from the pro-gun crowd, though I disagree with many of their other stances.
As far as the weekend's numbers go, I would theorize that the increase in gun violence stems from the general anything-goes atmosphere of the 4th of July weekend, where fireworks are going off all over the place, in every neighborhood, day and night. The sounds mask the sound of gunshots well enough that, were one planning to go all wild west, this past weekend would be the most advantageous time to do it. If it's not that easy to distinguish between fireworks and gunfire, the shooter at least has a head start before the body is noticed.